The Colorado Symphony Orchestra has Broncos fever, or fear maybe. Photo from the CSO.

The Colorado Symphony Orchestra won’t be playing against the Broncos Feb. 2. The ensemble is moving its scheduled concert on that day to avoid conflicting with the Super Bowl.

The performance will take place at noon, instead of 2:30 p.m. The Denver Broncos play the Seattle Seahawks at 4:30 p.m.

The CSO isn’t going down in defeat without a sense of humor, and a nod to the home team. Ticket prices will be half-off for those who show up in Broncos colors. “Seahawks fans pay double,” according to the CSO.

Music director is the more traditional title for an orchestra’s artistic leader and implies total control over all aspects of playing, from hiring musicians to selecting repertoire to overseeing performances.

When Litton joined the CSO in 2012, he assumed the artistic advisor role because his schedule permitted him limited time in Denver. He guest conducts around the world and is officially music director of Norway’s Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as artistic director of the Minnesota Orchestra Sommerfest, which takes place in July and August,

Litton, who is scheduled to conduct just six of the CSO’s 16 programs in the 2013-14 season, has a little more time on his hands now. The Minnesota Orchestra canceled its summer programming due to stalled — and ongoing — labor negotiations, which have silenced the ensemble for the near future.

Under Litton’s enhanced leadership role, the CSO hopes to pursue recording contracts, an important step in increasing its reputation beyond the region.

[media-credit name=”U.S. Army Chorus” align=”alignnone” width=”495″][/media-credit] The U.S. Army chorus’ collaborative concert with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra has been replaced by another program of music because of government sequestration.

The U.S. Army Chorus, which was created in 1956 as a counterpart to the U.S. Army Band, isn’t allowed to travel beyond its home of Washington D.C. because of the sequester, according to a release from the symphony. The sequester affecting federal spending began on March 1.

The home of the newly-Denver-based Wonderbound Dance Company, formerly Ballet Nouveau Colorado.

In December we told you about an ambitious rebranding effort from the Broomfield-based nonprofit Ballet Nouveau Colorado, which has lately enjoyed renewed vigor and attendance thanks to its audience-favorite “Carry On.”

The 10-year-old dance company would split off from the 20-year-old school — to be renamed the Colorado Conservatory of Dance — and move to Denver under the new name Wonderbound.

Today the company moved several steps closer to that new identity by physically taking up residence at its new home at 1075 Park Avenue West, just northeast of downtown near the growing Ballpark neighborhood. The building, the former home of Weisco Motorcars, shares the area with the RedLine art gallery and several commercial and industrial businesses, positioning Wonderbound closer to the heart of the Denver arts scene.

The Colorado Symphony Orchestra will kick off its 2013-14 season with two big names Sept. 20: saxophonist Branford Marsalis and the CSO’s own new star, conductor Andrew Litton.

The season, announced Friday, will be the first that Litton has guided as the orchestra’s artistic adviser, and he has programmed it for variety, spreading his choice of composers across classical music’s standard time zones. All the big names have a place, though none in especially huge quantities: Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Mahler.

Like the current season, the orchestra will present 16 of its main Masterworks concerts, each three times on Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons. Litton will be on the podium for six of them.

Colorado Symphony CEO Gene Sobczak is leaving the orchestra’s top position after just one year on the job.

Replacing him as head of day-to-day operations is Jerome Kern. Kern co-chairs the CSO’s board of trustees along with his wife, Mary Rossick Kern.

Sobczak, who gave up his job as head of the Arvada Center to take the orchestra position, said Thursday that he plans to set up a consultancy working with cultural nonprofits. The CSO will be among his clients.

“I had made the commitment to myself to stay on for a year and to determine then where my work was best-placed,” he said Thursday.

Sometimes I stare into my little beagle’s eyes and wonder what she’s thinking. She’s a talented pup, and loyal, present at my feet from breakfast to bedtime.

But does she comprehend her life? Understand the depth of our relationship?

Then I realize it doesn’t matter because – and if you have kids or dogs you’ll get this – I just think she’s adorable.

I’m full of the same wonder listening to 12-year-old Jackie Evancho sing and, to be clear, the world loves to hear her sing. She got five standing ovations during her Monday night performance of movie music with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra at Boettcher Concert Hall.

Evancho, a perky kid with a tight, white smile, is a platinum-selling recording artist from Pennsylvania. She is very much a celebrity of her day rising up first on the web as the star of short videos, then on reality TV, where she finished second on the program “America’s Got Talent,” then on PBS, where her musical specials have helped raise major cash for public television.

She sings light classical and heavy pop. Her one-night program with the CSO at Boettcher Concert Hall is billed as “Songs from the Silver Screen” and will feature tunes borrowed from popular films.

Tickets range from $29-$100 and the orchestra is giving first dibs to subscribers through Sept. 9. But check the CSO website at cololoradosymphony.org for availability. Or call 303-623-7876.

Tickets go on sale Saturday, which would have been the musician’s 100th birthday.

Guthrie, who penned such classics as “This Land is Your Land,” “Roll on Columbia,” and the heartbreaking “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” which chronicled the loss of 28 migrant workers being deported in 1948 from California to Mexico. Guthrie was a major influence on the wave of folksingers that emerged in the early 1960s, including a young kid named Bob Dylan.

The Colorado Symphony Orchestra entertains the crowd gathered in Civic Center on Saturday, July 3, 2010 before a fireworks finale in downtown Denver.

There’s something truly special about the communal Independence Day celebration that has evolved in Civic Center. It’s one of those rare times everyone in the city comes together. Families, kids on dates, the fine arts crowd.

This year, the event takes place on Tuesday, July 3 and the main attraction is the CSO, playing for free for the city it calls home. The CSO sets up a temporary band shell and mixes it up, a little classical, a little pop, a lot of patriotic.

This year, resident Conductor Scott O’Neil leads the way with Aaron Copland’s “Hoe Down,” from “Rodeo”, selections from Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” Hey, it’s the Fourth of July.

It’s a great, no-cost, night on the town. Unless it rains. In which case, you can catch the whole thing on TV. KTVD-TV, Channel 20 will broadcast an hour of (commercial-free1) highlights at 8 p.m. July 4.

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